Second Day

Yesterday morning I took this painting up to the Royal Academy for yet another attempt at the Summer Show. How many of us try hopefully each year, knowing that the odds are not favourable? I hurried through the Burlington Arcade, with its gleaming shop windows and neat little boxes of sparkling jewellery, pastel knitwear, expensive shoes in a variety of striking colours, and an aura of hushed exclusivity. I wondered where the other artists were, why no one was struggling with large paintings through the narrow walkway filled with shoppers.

It was the Second Day. I realised with a shot of panic that possibly most people deliver their work on the first delivery date. Do people believe that you have more chance if your painting passes along in the line of thousands on that First Day, while the selectors' eyes are still fresh and open to excitement? It's something I've always believed, but this year I was forced into the Second Day. As I reached the end of the arcade, and turned towards the Royal Academy back entrance, I noted the empty street. First Day delivery ensures a long wait in an ever-growing queue which frequently disappears out of view. Each foot of forward motion is wedged between interminable bands of non-movement. A sense of triumph follows the handing over of your work, and a quick exit passes the still-growing queue.

Yesterday I breezed down the long, narrow entrance to the Royal Academy, and unwrapped my small painting. Television cameras were there, filming an artist who was unwrapping a large canvas of purple flowers. As I left, small groups of artists were arriving, but the atmosphere was very different to First Day. The long queues seemed to emanate a sense of urgency and energy.

Afterwards I reasoned with myself that if one's chances are so small anyway, First or Second Day probably makes almost zero difference!

('One Among Many,' oil and acrylic on canvas, 41cm x 51cm )

March 19th, First real day of Spring

After 4 months of not being able to paint in situ, I was finally able to go out on Saturday. It was the first clear blue sky, the first truly warm air of the year. As I walked up the long drive into the grounds at Burrswood, I could hardly wait to open my watercolour book. The bright sunlight etched skeletal branches with gold, and deep shadows flooded the emerald grass. I usually paint outdoors in January and February, as I like to experience the minute changes to the colours as the seasons progress, but this winter has been too cold, wet, or snow-bound.

Painting outdoors is important to me because through this experience I can re-evaluate elements that are relevant to my studio-based (and more imaginative-based) paintings. I love painting in front of nature, I also love re-assembling the experiences on canvas away from nature. Everything feeds into everything else. Something seen months earlier suddenly pops up as a shape or colour on my canvas.

('March 19th,' watercolour, 16ins x 12ins, painted in situ/ 'The Best May Blossom Ever,' Acrylic on board, 61cm x 91cm, studio painting)

Emotional Cords

There comes a point when you have to detach from a painting. I have a natural tendency to obsess over my work so I'm quite grateful when I reach a state of detachment through outside forces. Often a friend or family member will say, 'That looks finished to me,' and I step back, drink a coffee, and try to view the painting as if I hadn't painted it. How many times has a friendly remark prevented me from over-working a picture! Sometimes turning it to the wall for a week has the same advantages.

As I prepared to deliver my latest commission, I realised with some relief that it was finished after all. Up until that moment of cutting the emotional umbilical cord, I can't enjoy the painting. Once it stands separately from me, it can go off into the world hopefully with the meaning that was intended. My 'Nicosia Balconies at Night,' held exactly the sense of place I'd wanted to convey.

Then the process begins all over again; the same searching, the same self-doubt that is the Artist's life. I'm working on 5 more canvases, of differing sizes, and the first rays of sunlight brought with them an invitation to put two painting in the Not The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery in London.

(Photos: Fiona with a large Turkish Baths canvas/A selection of recently completed works, and works in progress.)

Admin versus Creativity

After much painting, erasing, and contemplation, and numerous cups of coffee, my commission is finished. I could have gone on longer, but felt that it had reached the stage where it conveyed the buzz of night life and multi-layered conversations that were the original impetus. It's a theme I love, as each brushstroke takes me back to my many night-time walks around Nicosia, and colours start to carry the essence of those memories.

The painting will be delivered on Saturday, but during the painting process my client was kept updated by the means of photos of the progress of the painting attached in emails. Modern technology can be so helpful for an artist and saves so much time.

Much of my painting day tends to be taken up with what friends refer to as 'Admin Time.' Perhaps there was a Golden Era when galleries sought out artists and opportunities dropped in through the letterbox each day. Now we have to be on constant alert for exhibition opportunities and the chance to showcase our work. This means signing up to gallery newsletters online, joining artists' databases, and constant networking (often on the internet) and putting your work on as many websites as you can find! It is time consuming and can be expensive, and of course there are thousands all doing the same thing. But what I love about the internet is how easy it is to enter other artists' worlds and make connections. My own practice has been greatly extended by sites such as Facebook, which allows me daily discussions with artists around the world.

('Nicosia Balconies at Night,' 120cm by 60cm, Oil and Acrylic on canvas.)

Travel

As 2010 ticked into 2011, I was standing watching the fireworks in Nicosia, Cyprus, with my partner. As the fireworks exploded, and cascades of fiery stars fell through the darkness, I cheered loudly with the crowds. Faces shone with the universal hope a New Year always brings.

A few days later, after numerous walks through sunlit parks glowing with the artificial greens that unfold at that time of year, I was yearning to paint. I wrote this in my diary:

'Images are struggling to get out, beating against closed eyelids: when I close my eyes they flit across my inner vision, they seep into dreams, they burst out from behind and between leaves and concrete as I walk, they float up from the sweet earth and sing from the trickling river. I smell them as I pass rainbow flowers, and hear them bubbling behind apocalyptic clouds strewn with grey streamers. Vision and experience cross over into one another, they mutate into something new and bright. I sense the life forces between things, and feel the energies. The problem is to find the right form of expression and this takes time, focus and integrity. I don't want to follow trends or adapt my work for commercial reasons. It has to be pure, at the 'risk' of never making it in the 'real' world.'

('Out of the Loop,' watercolour, 16ins x 12ins, painted in Nicosia.)

Choices

As I prepare to go to Cyprus for a few weeks, I'm thinking about the way that no one thing affects the way a painting evolves. Poetry flows from layers of experience, finds its path into a painterly vision from mulitple scents, sights and emotions, and memories.

'Choices: Carob Trees and Figures at Dusk' emerged through the act of painting, and through the realisation that the points of red paint could be a metaphor for the last rays of the sun during a walk along the coast in Paphos. The choices represent paint choices, as much as referring to the choices we all make as human beings. It was painted 3 months after my experience of the coastal walks, but I start to wonder if perhaps that passage of time allows a purer synthesis of

the original sensations. Links are constantly forged, broken, re-created, and drop into a painting in unexpected ways. I find the contrasts between painting in situ, painting from memory, and the many walks here and abroad coagulate and re-assemble in my work in ways that are increasingly exciting me.

('Choices: Carob Trees and Figures at Dusk,' Oil and acrylic, 91cm x 61cm)

Overlapping Lives

As I prepare to continue work on a large commission, I'm remembering the many commissions I undertook when I lived in Cyprus. The memories are particularly poignant as the painting I've been commissioned to do is based on one of my favourite themes, Nicosia at night. I have always loved night and random views through windows onto people's lives. In Nicosia, people tend to live on their balconies, especially in the summer. I'd push my way through crowds on the pavements, catching snippets of conversations, while my eyes were always drawn to figures on balconies above. They would be sitting at tables eating, or watching a TV pulled out of a half-lit room. Sofas jostled for space with plant pots. Lights flickered eerily within fluorescent rectangles, curtains danced in the longed for breezes, and figures leaned wearily across their washing and watched me move past. Lives overlapped, breaths were shared, and heartbeats echoed within shimmering blocks of yellows and greens.

Sometimes I sat on the flat roof of my building in darkness and watched shadowy forms moving inside semi-lit rooms. My eyes journeyed through the many shades of Night's interiors. All the time I tried to memorise the particular warmth, scent and pulse of night. Gradually it seeped into me.

The painting has evolved from these memories. I know the streets intimately, I know those crooked balconies and unevenly spaced rectangles of colour. I can smell fried food, hear the chink of dishes. It is a theme I could paint forever because within each brushstroke I'm reliving my walks and the warm passages of night life.

('Nicosia Night,' 120cm by 60cm, oil on canvas - work in progress.)